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Mock Hare

A roast beef sirloin stuffed with a forcemeat of veal, suet, anchovies, bread, spices, and eggs, baked and served with gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Mock Hare

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Place the inside of the sirloin in an earthen pan and cover with Port wine. Let it sit for 24 hours.

  2. Prepare a forcemeat by mixing veal, suet, anchovies, grated bread, mace, pepper, mushroom powder, lemon peel, lemon thyme, eschalot, and egg yolks.

  3. Spread the forcemeat over the beef, roll it tightly, and roast it by hanging it before the fire.

Roast and serve

  1. Baste with the soaking wine until half cooked, then switch to cream or a mixture of milk and butter, frothing until well coated.

  2. Serve with a rich gravy flavored with walnut or mushroom catsup and a tablespoon of eschalot vinegar.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Beef + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Bread + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Port wine + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together570 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sirloin of beef
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the flavor of the forcemeat and soaking wine.
Port wine
Soaks the beef, adding sweetness and aroma while the wine is also used for basting.
Forcemeat of veal
Forms a tender, moist stuffing that surrounds the beef as it roasts.
Suet
Adds fat that keeps the forcemeat moist and rich during roasting.
Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat so it holds together when rolled and roasted.
Cream or milk and butter
Add fat and moisture to the basting, encouraging a rich, golden coating on the roast.

The step that matters

Basting with the soaking wine, then switching to cream or milk and butter. Switching basting liquids at the halfway point matters because the sugars and proteins in the dairy brown more readily than wine alone. Basting too late or too early can leave the surface pale or dry.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, port wine, veal, bread, pepper, mushroom, lemon):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, port wine, veal, bread, pepper, mushroom, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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